


in your arms

by enamuko



Series: FE Rarepair Week 2k19 [5]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates, Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: (post fates specifically), F/F, Fluff, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 06:21:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20887529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enamuko/pseuds/enamuko
Summary: Noire was clingier now than she had been before Severa left on her little... Journey. And it wasn't like she minded, but sometimes she did like to try and get some sleep, even if there was a loud and obnoxious rainstorm going on outside...





	in your arms

**Author's Note:**

> Just some mindless fluff. Talks about Fates a lot. My Fates bias is definitely showing,,,  
Written for Fire Emblem Rarepair Week! Prompt is "Cozy".  
(Getting this one in just under the wire since it's 11:10PM where I am right now... Which means the last two prompts will definitely not be on time lmao. But we'll see how long it actually takes me to get them done. This one was fairly quick.)

The thunder rolled outside prompting a startled yelp from her bedmate, and a pair of arms latched tightly around her as another bout of shivering starts.

“Damnit, Noire,” Severa murmured, mostly into her pillow. “It’s just thunder… There’s no reason to cling to me like the world is ending…”

“I-I know, but…”

She whimpered pathetically, and Severa felt like she had just kicked a puppy, which was something she felt a lot of the time when she was dealing with Noire and her…  _ Clingier _ moods.

She  _ had _ been getting better, even after Severa told her not to worry about something like that because she wasn’t a burden to her no matter how much trouble she managed to get into, but ever since she got back from her little…  _ Journey _ , Noire was worse than she ever had been before.

Severa couldn’t really blame her, though… Not after she’d just sort of…  _ Disappeared _ along with Inigo and Owain…

Severa sighed, deeply, and sat up. Noire followed, and made another little Noise that  _ still _ made her sound like a kicked puppy. Thankfully Severa didn’t really have to get out of bed to strike a match and light the lamp sitting on her bedside table.

When she flopped back down into the bed, she was facing Noire instead of being turned away from her, and she gave the mattress a pat to tell her to lie back down. Noire did so without question.

“S-sorry for keeping you up…”

“I already told you to stop apologizing like, a hundred times, didn’t I?” Severa huffed. “Besides, it’s not like we’re still having to get up at the crack of dawn to march anymore… We can get away with sleeping in a little. Especially when the weather is completely miserable.”

“Right…”

Another roll of thunder went off, but with the light of the lamp making everything gentle and warm and bright (or at least not miserably dark), Noire’s whimpering was a bit less pathetic.

(Honestly, Severa was just glad that she hadn’t seen Other Noire around for a while. Her whole ‘desperately pathetic’ routine was hard enough to deal with, sometimes. She didn’t need her being possessive and weird on top of that…)

“Even before I left, you didn’t used to be this bad with storms,” Severa said as she scooted in, draping one arm across Noire’s waist while she folded the other under her own head to keep it out of the way. “What happened?”

“Nothing, really…” Noire muttered, turning her head to say it into her pillow. “I suppose… Everything just felt a little… Harder to deal with when you weren’t here, Severa. I know the war was over and everything, but it still felt… Really strange not having you around to help me.”

Severa felt a pretty intense pang of guilt at that. So much so that she probably would have gotten pissed off at someone for trying to make her feel bad if it hadn’t been Noire, who she knew wasn’t doing it to make her feel bad on purpose…

“Yeah… Sorry. I should have told you. Or something.” Severa knew why that really hadn’t been an option, but still, she couldn’t help but feel bad.

They had all decided to stick together, even after the war was over, even after they’d managed to avert their terrible future. They might have split up to go off and do their own things, but they’d all decided to stay in this younger peaceful time and live their lives instead of worrying about a world that had been so doomed the only way to save it was to go back and make sure it never happened in the first place.

And then, all of a sudden, the three of them had just been…  _ Gone _ . At least, in the eyes of the people they’d left behind. Not that she’d spent a lot of those early nights in Nohr wondering whether Noire was going to miss her or anything…

Considering how suddenly they’d all lost their parents, even if times were peaceful now, it was still pretty terrible. If she had to go back… Well, she would still probably do it, but she’d definitely at least try to let someone know she was okay and she’d be back soon…

(It was stupid to think about it at all, really. It was in the past. She was back home now. She missed Lady Camilla and everyone else, sure, but they were happy and  _ their _ evil dragon was dead and with Corrin around she was sure everyone would be just fine without her there…

She was definitely coping  _ just fine _ with all of it, yes sir. As long as she didn’t, like… Think about it. At all.)

“I’m… Sorry, Severa.” Now that they had the lamp, Severa could actually see the look on Noire’s face instead of just  _ guessing _ that she was looking at her with big puppy dog eyes.

(Why did she compare her to a puppy constantly? Even she didn’t know…)

“I d-don’t want you to feel guilty. I know it was important. I just… I just missed you, that’s all. And I’m glad you’re back home and safe.”

Normally, Severa was the one always having to do everything when it came to Noire. To the point that it actually got a little infuriating at times. Though Severa, to a degree, enjoyed being relied on, it could get grating when you were being relied upon for things that really should have been basic knowledge. She could forgive Noire for it, though, because she was… Noire.

Severa loved her too much to really give her a hard time about it.

The point being, Severa wasn’t used to Noire taking the initiative with a lot of things. She was always leaning on  _ her _ for everything, whether it was battle or chores or… Whatever.

(At least Severa had gotten a lot better at a lot of things. Being a retainer meant she’d had to take care of so many things for Camilla, and she got a lot of practice without having to worry about being constantly compared to someone perfect, even if sometimes in the back of her head she still heard the voices comparing her to her mother…)

It surprised her, then, when Noire reached down to take her hands and bring them up to her chest. Noire’s hands were cold, like they always were— from the anemia, which also made the tips of her fingers and toes turn bluish-purple in cold weather that always made Severa worry even more than usual— but she didn’t mind.

“I know it must have been hard on you, too…” Noire’s voice was even softer than usual. Which was impressive considering unless Other Noire was basically screaming everything, Severa had to strain to hear her at the best of times. But since there were no sounds at all aside from the occasional rumble of thunder outside, she heard her perfectly clearly… “I mean… You had to fight again, even though we just got to stop fighting, and you had to leave all of us behind, and you made friends there too, right? And you had to leave them behind to come back here…”

“Noire…” Severa really didn’t want to talk about something like that. She had no idea how all that alternate world stuff worked, really, even less than she knew how all the time travel malarky had worked. She didn’t know whether she would ever be able to see Camilla or Beruka or Corrin or anyone from Nohr ever again…

“I just wanted to say that I’m grateful you came back, Severa.” Noire brought Severa’s hands up to her face, still gripped in her own, so she could nuzzle against them and then kiss her knuckles. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come back.”

“Probably been a real klutz,” Severa laughed, to hide the fact that she was tearing up and trying to force herself not to sniffle. “But you know I was always gonna come back, right?”

“I know…”

Noire didn’t sound sure of that. And to be honest, Severa wasn’t either. Oh, she always planned to come back when their job was done with, but… Well, there had been a few close calls, especially since she had been ready and willing to put her life on the line for Lady Camilla…

She definitely came home with more scars than she left with, and considering she had been in two wars even before that, that was really saying something…

“You would have been fine without me even if I didn’t come back,” Severa said, continuing to force herself not to cry, because she was  _ supposed _ to be the tough one between the two of them, damn it! “I mean… You’ve got everyone else, and even the Tharja of this time is a lot better to you, right? You would have managed…”

“I know I have other people I can rely on if I need to,” Noire said, releasing Severa’s hands just long enough so she could fold their fingers together. “But… I don’t really want to. I know that’s selfish of me…”

“It’s not selfish at all!” Severa blurted out.

She was quickly giving into the whole sniffling thing. She was trying to be more honest with herself, after all. She wasn’t the angry kid that had been flung back in time and forced to relive her mommy issues all over again with a woman who was hardly any older than she was; she’d helped save the world, then she’d gone on to help save  _ another  _ world even though she really didn’t  _ have _ to, which she thought was very generous of her…

So, crying. Totally a healthy thing to do, right? It wasn’t that she wasn’t a big crier, because that would have been an absolute  _ lie _ , she just… Didn’t  _ like _ to cry. It made her feel weak and childish, especially because it usually came with a swelling of emotions that would lead to a tantrum and then afterwards she would feel even worse when people tried to coddle her like she shouldn’t  _ know _ better— 

But this was Noire. Even if she did do something like that, there was no way Noire would call her childish for it, or get mad at her… Unless Other Noire decided to come out, and her outbursts were usually so over dramatic and weird that they never really made her feel  _ bad _ .

So, her sniffling turned into whimpering and then into crying, proper crying. It wasn’t the sort of crying where you sobbed and got snot all over yourself, which she was thankful for, but it was probably just because it was late and night and she was too tired for that.

“S-Severa? Are you… Are you okay? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry…” Noire kept kissing her knuckles, as if that was going to make her  _ stop _ crying rather than just make her feel like crying even  _ more _ .

“You dope… I-I’m not crying because you upset me…” She pulled one of her hands away from Noire so she could rub tears away from her eyes before they started getting drippy or making it hard for her to see. “I’m crying because I… I missed you too, okay? A lot. There was this maid, Felicia, who was a lot like you, and every time I saw her screw something up or need help I thought of you and wondered how you were doing without me…”

Severa winced when she realized… Exactly how bad that probably sounded. But Noire didn’t look upset or offended. In fact, she was starting to blush. Severa might have teased her about it if they weren’t having something like a heartfelt moment.

“I told you before, it’s okay to rely on me. Knowing there’s someone out there who does… It makes me feel like I can actually manage to do something right. And yeah, I know how pathetic that probably sounds, but… I really,  _ really _ like taking care of you, even if it can get kind of annoying s-sometimes.” Severa scrubbed more tears out of her eyes. “So don’t call it selfish… I wouldn’t keep doing it if I didn’t  _ like _ doing it.”

It was nothing that she hadn’t said before, but still, she felt embarrassed saying it now that they were lying in bed together face to face and Severa was crying while Noire was holding her hand. She still felt like she  _ had _ to say it, though. She was pretty sure Noire wasn’t going to ever completely get over feeling like she was a burden on people, just like Severa was pretty sure  _ she _ would never totally get over feeling like everyone was constantly comparing to her mother… But they could at least make each other feel better and not make each other feel  _ worse _ .

She was pretty terrible at not making people feel worse, but she  _ tried _ . And she tried especially hard for Noire.

“I do miss the people there, but… I always would have missed you more, no matter what.”

She’d said more embarrassing things than that to Noire. She’d told her she  _ loved _ her, which was objectively a way more intimate thing to say, but she couldn’t stop herself from wanting to turn and hide her face in the pillow.

At least it was late, and it was raining and miserable outside, so she was totally justified in wanting to roll over and go to sleep. That’s what she told herself as she pulled her other hand from Noire’s and rolled over onto her stomach, planting her face firmly in the pillow.

“Oh, Severa…”

Noire laughed— not her big evil sounding laugh but a little high-pitched one that for once didn’t sound nervous, which was impressive because Noire  _ always _ sounded nervous even when she was just talking normally— and Severa felt her lean across her and blow out the lamp before settling in to cuddle up to her.

“M-maybe… If you do ever find a way to go back… We could go together? And you could introduce me to all of your new friends…?”

Severa turned her head so she could at least peek at Noire through one eye, even though it was back to being dark again and she couldn’t really see her at all. Although she could picture the nervous smile Noire was wearing pretty clearly even when she couldn’t actually  _ see _ it…

“...Yeah,” she muttered back. “That… I’d like that.”

That was probably putting it mildly. She knew Lady Camilla would  _ love _ Noire— she loved all cute girls, after all, and Severa knew there was no one cuter— and Noire would probably find Prince Xander— no, he would be King Xander now— pretty intimidating, but once he opened up a little bit they would probably have a lot in common, and Beruka…

Well, she would figure something out about Beruka.

She wasn’t sure it would ever be possible. But she liked the sound of it. Enough that she picked herself up from where she was buried in her arms (and the pillow) to lean in and give Noire a quick kiss just for suggesting it.

(It was kind of awkward in the dark, and was was pretty sure she bumped Noire’s noise, but Noire didn’t say anything, so she was in the clear.)

Noire made a little ‘Oh!’ noise, but instead of saying anything, she just burrowed in closer. Severa lifted her arm and rolled herself a little more onto her side as an invitation for Noire to snuggle in against her. Noire accepted the invitation and even though she was the taller of the two, she nuzzled into Severa’s neck and shoulder, their legs tangling together comfortably.

Another roll of thunder went off in the distance, but this time Noire didn’t whimper or whine. Maybe it was the fact that it was a lot quieter now as the storm was moving further and further way, leaving more time between the thunder and the lightning. Maybe she was just too cozy to be worried about something like that.

Severa liked to think she was just doing a good job making her feel safe. It made  _ her _ feel like she was definitely doing something right…

“Noire?”

“Yes, Severa?”

Their voices were both heavy with sleep, and with Noire cuddled up with her, Severa could feel herself drifting off. She let a yawn interrupt her before she could continue with,

“I love you.”

“I love you too, Severa…”

Severa wrapped her arms around Noire, settled her chin against the top of Noire’s head, and let herself get drawn into a deep and comfortable sleep.


End file.
